Donald Sachtleben is shown in 2007 participating in a course on explosive and weapons of mass destruction at the Amtrak repair yard in Indianapolis. He was sentenced Thursday to a combined 11 years, 8 months, on charges of possessing and distributing child pornography and leaking national security information.

A former FBI bomb technician and government contractor from Carmel was sentenced to nearly 12 years in prison today for his involvement in a child pornography offense and a national security leak involving a thwarted al-Qaida bomb plot.

Donald Sachtleben, 55, was solemn as he appeared in front of U.S. District Judge William Lawrence and apologized several times for his involvement in both crimes.

"It is not a sense of relief I feel," Sachtleben said before his sentencing. "It is a sense of regret."

Sachtleben pleaded guilty in September to the charges, which resulted from the unlikely entwining of two separate criminal investigations.

One started in the U.S. attorney's office, when federal prosecutors traced child pornography to a computer in Sachtleben's Carmel home as part of a years-long investigation into a child porn ring originating in Illinois. Prosecutors said Thursday that Sachtleben possessed more than 600 such images of at least 19 children, many under 12 years of age.

Sachtleben was arrested on those charges May 11, 2012.

As part of that investigation, prosecutors collected all of Sachtleben's personal information - including cell phones and his personal computer.

That information later proved instrumental to federal officials in Washington trying to connect Sachtleben to a high-profile leak of classified CIA information to an Associated Press reporter.

That leak, prosecutors said, took place nine days before Sachtleben's child pornography arrest. An AP reporter used information from Sachtleben in a published story about a failed al-Qaida plot in April 2012, when a Yemen-based group planned to bomb a U.S.-bound airliner in the Arabian Peninsula.

The information collected in the child pornography case, U.S. Attorney Joe Hogsett said, confirmed Sachtleben's involvement in the leaks and ultimately expedited the charges that were brought against him.

Sachtleben's sentence Thursday - 3 years, 7 months on the national security charge and 8 years, 1 month for distributing and possessing child pornography - was expected, and followed what prosecutors and Sachtleben's attorneys had agreed to during an earlier plea agreement.

Sachtleben took about 10 minutes during the hearing to try to convince the judge he had reformed since his arrests in 2012 and had taken several classes for couples counseling with his wife, substance abuse and sexual behavioral problems. He often turned to look at his wife, who was seated in the second row.

"I have a desire to be a better person," Sachtleben said.

Sachtleben's motives for leaking the classified documents, meanwhile, remain unclear. During the hearing, he said he was not motivated out of financial reasons or out of a desire to expose any fraud or corruption within the government.

Outside the courthouse after the sentencing, Bob Jones, the FBI's special agent in charge of its Indianapolis division, reiterated that point, adding that Sacthleben was "not a whistle-blower."

"It's upsetting when one of our own does something like this," Jones said.

Sachtleben's involvement in the security leaks also spurred national discussion about media shield laws: The U.S. Department of Justice was originally fingered by investigators in that leak, after the agency subpoenaed phone records from AP reporters and editors.

The resulting outcry from those revelations last May prompted the introduction of a new bill, the Free Flow of Information Act, that if enacted will create a media shield law ensuring journalists' abilities to protect the identity of confidential sources.

That bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in September and remains up for a vote on the full Senate floor.